Peruvian prison 'hell': Life after lockup

Troy Neethling is back home in Cape Town after spending eight years in a Peruvian prison for drug trafficking. Photograph: Robin Adams

Troy Neethling is back home in Cape Town after spending eight years in a Peruvian prison for drug trafficking. Photograph: Robin Adams

Published Sep 12, 2021

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IT WAS meant to be a one-off. A risky mission, meticulously put together, that would set Troy Neethling up comfortably for years to come.

He would jet off to Peru, acquire a significant quantity of the purest cocaine on the planet, bring it back to Cape Town and sell it for an eye-watering sum of money. Twenty kilograms of coke would go for roughly $20 000 (about R286 000) a kilo. That was the hope.

Instead, Neethling, a former professional diver, ended up spending eight-and-a-half years of his life in one of South America's worst prisons – Sarita Colonia in Peru.

The 45-year-old was arrested on drug trafficking charges at Hugo Chavez International Airport, just outside the capital Lima, in April 2012.

Graphic: Timothy Alexander

Neethling spoke exclusively to Weekend Argus about his nearly decade-long ordeal. He has been living a sheltered life since returning to the Cape after his release last year. It is the first time he has opened up to anyone outside his family, about his experience being locked up abroad.

The latest figures show that Peru, the world’s second-largest producer of cocaine, accounts for nearly 500 tons of global supply, annually.

Neethling admitted he had been selling small quantities of the drug before his fateful trip to South America.

“At the time I was going through a mid-life crisis. I had just got divorced,: he said. ”My supplier in South Africa said to me: ’The product (cocaine) we're getting here (in the country) is bullsh**. Why don't we just get our own sh**?’

“And instead of waiting for somebody (a drug mule) reliable and ballsy enough to do it (smuggle contraband), I just said: ’You know, f*** it, let me go."

Neethling said his "connections" arranged everything. "All I needed was my passport."

For two weeks he played the role of tourist in Lima; soaking up the sun at the city's beaches, drinking beer and enjoying meals at local restaurants.

"I even had my divorce decree with me in case anyone (from the immigration department) asked."

Neethling made sure he kept to himself. “I got warned not to socialise with the women in Peru, because a lot of them work for the cops. I didn't meet anyone, except a contact.“

Shortly before he was due to return home, Neethling’s Peruvian suppliers dropped off a heavy backpack at his hotel.

He made his way to the airport, and checked in for the first leg of his flight. Just then, a Peruvian police officer “flashed his badge” and asked Neethling to escort him to an inspection area.

Authorities discovered clothing, soaked in liquid cocaine, in vacuum-sealed bags.

“I never opened that bag. So, at that point, I am denying that the bag is mine. I’m still chilled."

Anyone who' has ever watched an episode of the Border Security reality TV show on DStv, knows the phrase “I never opened that bag” is one of the most commonly used denials.

Neethling said he was then taken to holding cells where he spent the next 15 days before he was transferred to the notorious Sarita Colonia maximum security prison.

“I was remanded in custody for almost two years before I saw the inside of a courtroom. My court hearing was conducted in Spanish. I didn’t understand a word of what they're saying. There was no translator. And it happened so fast. Up until that point I didn’t know if I was going home in 15 years or six years.”

Neethling was sentenced to eight years in prison.

Reflecting on his first day in Sarita Colonia, Neethling recalled: “It was a public holiday. So, the first meal we got wasn’t a sad looking meal. Half a grilled chicken and rice. You don’t get a plate. So you're holding a scoop of rice in your hands and the chicken is on top of that. No forks, no knives.

“When I arrived, there were 317 inmates.” Overcrowding at Sarita Colonia is reportedly at 463%. And as things stand, it is the prison hardest hit by the Covid 19 pandemic in Peru.

Neethling said sickness and disease were rife.

“Tuberculosis was a daily occurrence around us. I saw people die.”

And what made prison life hard was the mental side of it.

“As a new inmate, or somebody foreign, there are visiting hours every Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. People are coming to visit with grocery bags filled with food. If you don’t have anyone visiting, it makes life hard.”

Describing the food as “inedible”, Neethling said he ate every three days. He slept on a concrete floor.

“There's no access to the toilet from 7.30pm to 6.15am. So, I learnt to control my bladder. Your toilet is a little plastic (cooldrink) bottle. You sh** in a plastic bag. You train your system. You don’t consume liquids after 4pm.”

Over the years, Neethling wrote lengthy letters to his family back home, and spent most of his days reading. He also learnt to speak Spanish fluently.

“Every Monday they let you line up and sing the Peruvian anthem. But I refused.”

Replaying the scene at the airport in his mind, Neethling believed he was the fall guy and that someone snitched on him.

“Because that is just how corrupt the system is, that side. I was stopped with the 20kg I was hoping to carry through. But I can almost guarantee that this allowed someone else carrying 60 kilos to walk right past customs at that time.

“Every Sunday night in prison, we used to watch Airport Security Peru (reality tv series), and laugh at the bullsh**. Because we understood how the system worked. And it was just one big trap.”

The past few years of his sentence were spent at Ancon 2 prison, a minimum security facility. Neethling described the last three months as especially challenging.

“I was in solitary confinement. You get one hour a week out in the yard.”

Neethling was released on Christmas Day in 2019, but arrived in Cape Town at the end of February last year.

“You've got to find your own way (home). It’s costly.”

His first order of business was satisfying a years-long craving – wolfing down a giant rib-eye steak.

The Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Dirco) has told Weekend Argus that there are 136 South Africans in South American prisons, 76 are on parole.

Dirco spokesperson Lunga Ngqengelele said that through its missions across the globe, the department linked prisoners who were detained abroad and their families back home (in South Africa).

“The role we play is to offer consular services. We visit the prisoners regularly just to check up on them in terms of conditions and any other requests that are within the law that they might want to communicate either to government or their families.”

Director of the NGO Locked Up Patricia Gerber said most of the South Africans locked up in South America were behind bars for drug-related crimes. Dirco, however, would not confirm that.

She was scathing in her criticism of the South African government’s efforts to repatriate prisoners to serve the remainder of their sentences at home.

“Our main purpose is to educate the public. And also for (the South African) government to enter into prisoner transfer agreements. I think it is ridiculous to have one of the best Constitutions in the world and yet they don’t want their citizens (detained abroad) back (home).

“My hope is that government will let them come and serve the remainder of their sentences here in South Africa, so that they can be reunited with their families.

“All of these alleged crimes originated on South African soil, and government turned their backs on their own people.

“There are no rehabilitation programmes offered by government for returning offenders. I am so proud of many of our people who have come back who have reintegrated into society after being away for years. They have found themselves jobs, many of them are married and have children today; and they have made something of their lives without any help from government.”

Neethling’s biggest regret is the time he lost with his family.

“No amount of money is worth that loss.”

But he is now a man on a new mission.

“I want to get back into the ocean, I want to dive. I want to do conservation work down the coast of Cape Town.

“I've been away from home, family and things that mean so much to me for so long. I came to understand that patience and the ability to actually be able to give back, pay it forward with my life, is the more important goal right now. Previously it used to be about chasing a dollar. Now time is important to me. I was always rushing through life. Now I am laid back, centred. I have an ability now to give back in a unique way.”

A remorseful Neethling had this message for anyone considering transporting drugs because it looks like “easy money”: “It's not worth it. There’s no amount of money that is worth the amount of time sacrificed in a foreign country in prison, where life is beneath what it’s like in our own country’s prisons. You live like a dog. You have absolutely zero liberties and freedoms.”

Neethling knows he will forever have a mark against his name. But insists it won’t define the rest of his days.

WEEKEND ARGUS

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Crime and courts